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Troy, New York October 29, 1934
Mrs. Kathryn Godwin F.E.R.A. My dear Mrs. Godwin: "IT'S GOING TO BE A HARD WINTER!" The city of Troy, New York faces the immediate approach of winter with this dirge on its lips. I heard the bleak prophecy of a hard winter everywhere--from the men and women receiving relief. From the city officials, who proudly tell the visitor how solvent is Troy, how sound its work projects, how considered and consistent its welfare work, how stable its citizens. But inevitably this paen of good cheer crashes down on the sour note--"It's going to be a hard Winter!" "Harder than last winter?" During four days spent in Troy, this question was put to scores in all walks of life, and always the answer was fatefully affirmative. Asked to particularize, the genial, oft-elected Mayor Cornelius F. Burns answered ruefully "D---d if I know why--I guess we just have the habit of saying its going to be a hard winter!" This habit pattern may account for the retail merchants who tell you that business has picked up due to some genuine business improvement and work relief expenditure, and then invariably these same sanguine informants wind up on the alarming note "but it's going to be a hard winter!" Executives interviewed in the collar factories, the manufacturing plants, mirror the general acceptance that "it's going to be a hard winter." Asked to prophecy for their particular plants they project a picture of mixed hope and belief that the factories now running will be able to keep their present force employed through the winter. Cluett Peabody, notably, and some other smaller factories, are employing more workers this year than last. In October 1933 Cluett, Peabody and Company were employing only 2972. This October there are 3617 workers on their payroll. THE TREND IS CERTAINLY UPWARDMayor Burns told this writer that the Ford plant Manager had assured him that they would spread work among 500 employees during the winter. In October this year there were 307 men employed at the Ford plant. October a year ago showed only 115 employees.Then why do factory managers add their chorus to the defeatest cry, "It's going to be a hard winter!" Not because there is the stalwart threat of a real strike. The workers in one small collar factory, The Artistic, went out on strike, but the consensus of opinion is that strikes will not spread, although the workers in this concern claim that the strike, just settled, is a victory for them. The answer given by an executive at Cluett Peabody was echoed by all. It's going to be a hard Winter, because in spite of the pick-up we show for a certain class of labor, the white collar class is worse off than ever. They have used up their savings, exhausted every possible help from friends and relatives, and there is no employment in sight for them. There are no "White Collar " work projects in Troy--There is the usual White Collar percentage on work relief administration,--engineers and such SO IT'S GOING TO BE A HARD WINTER--BUT NOT SO HARD AS LAST WINTER. In the city of Troy with a population of 72,763 in September 1933, there were 1642 families on relief. This September there were only 1380 families. When Troy has a community moment of hope for the future some old-timer reminds that the starched collar has gone forever, and with its passing came a permanent pain in the neck to Troy. The depression hit Troy in 1924 when the easily-made and anywhere-manufactured soft collar replaced the stiff collar that required 42 skilled operations and made Troy a haven for expert needle workers. So Troy has its personal as well as a national share in depression problems. THE FORECAST FOR THE WINTER RELIEF LOAD is that it will be lower this winter than last year. The relief load has gone down since the first of the year. Last January there were 2200 families on relief. In September there were 1380 families on relief. October will show an increase and it is certain that the load will go up during the winter months. However, the Welfare Department believes that it will be lower than the peak of last January. The new group that will need help this Winter will desperately resist declaring themselves in need. But at the long last, the will to survive is going to push some of the proudly reluctant on the relief load. Welfare workers figure that this new group from another strata in life will not he as large as those who have gone off relief into industry, or have been weeded out by the welfare Department because they were not eligible for relief. WHAT ABOUT THE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE ON RELIEF?Where the man of the family is able to work and is getting a chance at work relief the improved morale of the whole family is indisputable, say the welfare workers in touch with the families.I, myself, visited a number of families and was struck by the bitter complaints from the wife as well as the husband, that some other fellow, instead of her man, was getting a chance at work relief. The only criticism against the work projects from the clients is that there is not enough work. There are now some 242 men on the work projects and they plan to put on about 600 more. Some of the clients whine because they have not been given jobs, some of them shout their preference for work, but it is significant that they want the chance to earn enough for their budgets rather than to be supplied with the wherewithal to keep alive. Engineers and foremen on the work projects say that men long out of work take a little time to get their stride, but on the whole the men on work projects do a good days work when given a chance. The Superintendent of the Airport project, himself a man who had once been a very wealthy contractor but went broke, told me that they had had only one man there who seemed to lay down on the job. "He worked two days one week out here and he didn't look good to me after the first hour. The boss on his gang thought he was faking, but he looked kinda peaked to me and I told him if he was sick to lay off. He said "he'd rather die than quit. It felt good to be working again." "Two weeks later he was dead. They said all the time he was home sick he kept talking how he had a job out at the Airport. He sort of died with his boots on--if you know what I mean." The great majority of the clients and many of the citizens of Troy know what he means! For from the clients one hears "we want work." While the citizens don't believe that all the clients mean that, they grant that most of the men would grab a chance to work. A foreman at one of the plants--not a work project --who has been pretty steadily employed said, "this depression hasn't made bums out of the working men yet. I guess that's what people mean when they talk about work morale. "There are always bums who won't work in good or bad times. But don't tell me that these fellows out of work would not be any good if they did get their jobs hack. Sure they would--in no time at all. The employed worker in private industry asked how he felt about the work projects in Troy showed no resentment of them." "It would be a bloody shame to abandon the work projects," a man working in a factory said to me. "Even to work two days a week gives a fellow a different feeling." The men on the work projects never work the limit of 30 hours a week. The work is spread so that at the 50 cents an hour rate, a man is fortunate who makes $9.00 a week. Employers here do not complain that men won't take jobs in private industries because of the hourly rate on the work projects, short week and working conditions on the projects. So it would seem that the work projects in Troy do not conflict with private industry, are considered of permanent use by the majority of the citizens and give the men employed on them a chance to prove that they would rather work than take straight relief. THE CLIENTS--the majority of them Irish, and long resident in Troy, with a sprinkling of Polish, Ukranean, Italians and Negroes--ARE IN A SENSE GETTING USED TO RELIEF. The once-upstanding Irish Painter, who would have knocked a man down if he had told him the day would come when he would be taking his children to the Welfare Department to ask for shoes, now says cheerfully to the local investigator "I'll be seeing you on Monday. I'm bringing the kids down for shoes or they can't go to school. Then stooping over he flaps the loose sole of his own right shoe and adds "could I be getting something to fix this with?" The wife in this family in a sense is also getting used to relief. And this family represents the best among the clients. Husband, wife, six children, living in four neat rooms for which the welfare pays $12.00 a month. The wife's pinched lips find no difficulty in firmly asking the local investigator, "Will you see that I get some cod liver oil for the children? The little ones look peaked". If it's right to have children it's her right to have cod liver oil for them is her attitude--and why not? Then a little tremulously she says "I don't want to complain but I get awful poor stuff for the money in the place where I have to buy my things. I managed to save enough for a dozen eggs last week. The very first one I opened was rotten. I used the others for cooking but you could taste them even in the corn muffins I made." She is getting so used to relief that she no longer pleads to have the right to do her shopping where she chooses. Dimly she understands that those in charge are spreading the purchasing power of relief money among various trades-people, some of them neighborhood grocers themselves on the edge of failure. The more self-respecting, intelligent clients like this one, the chronic complainers, the "Gimmie-gimmies", are all thinking a lot about this system and are all feeling that if they must be "sentenced" to trade in certain stores for distribution sake, those stores should be jacked up to give as good quality for the money as the client could get elsewhere,--AND THEY DON'T BELIEVE THAT ENOUGH IS DONE ABOUT THAT. Authentic miracles in character building should not be sought among the victims of the depression--scant prospect of jobs, minimum of food, scarcity of clothing, makeshift shelter do not condition them to constructive action. The urge to strike out somewhere else, to find a new frontier is not in them. It is not necessary to discourage then about finding work elsewhere. They have not the means to move their families from Troy. And if they had, it would not occur to them. They do not show that much healthy sign of unrest. Nor is the dangerous urge to strike out at the government that is feeding them indicated in any of their actions. Here in Troy, one does not find organized protests, communistic talk, the lighting of the "red" fires against the desolate horizons of unemployment. The women meet the emergency from the work point of view with better training than in many communities. That may be explained by the fact that Troy has always been a town where women predominated in the needle work industries, and those industries predominated in the "Starched Collar" days. Therefore there are women qualified to work in the factories of this sort that still operate. The new work project for women which will use one of the abandoned Cluett Peabody factories will have no difficulty in finding 250 skilled needle workers to make clothing for the unemployed. They do not plan to make mattresses, "because there is such a feeling against it in the stores, and we don't need them much for the clients, and it's very impractical to get the equipment." Doctors in the clinics, the nurses agree that the "workers are not down and out yet--but it's a wonder they're still in the ring." No real health survey has been made for three years, but judged clinically, doctors and nurses believe there is a good deal of undernourishment with resultant ills. THE PROSPECTS OF THE UNEMPLOYED GETTING JOBS BACK IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS ARE VERY POOR,--unless the upward trend should begin to soar for reasons not apparent now. That is the consensus of opinion in Troy gleaned from employers in diversified lines. The average citizen who feels that he is now paying for all this unemployment relief in good tax measure, and will have to pay more heavily, grumbles a lot about the way the government is handling this unemployment business. But, when he is pinned down, the disgruntled citizen admits that the welfare department is trying to weed out those who should not have relief and that there is less "chiseling" this year than last. In one breath he tells you that we are RAISING A GENERATION OF "RELIEF RACKETEERS," and in the next he says, commenting on Mrs. Roosevelt's speech at Albany the other night, "WELL, SHE'S RIGHT--WE CAN'T LET PEOPLE STARVE." Asked what they think about the proposed social insurance legislation the majority of the employers interviewed said they were against it but didn't know just why. One executive said he thought we would come to some sort of unemployment and old age insurance in this country but was sure the government would adopt the wrong plan! In contrast to this cynical attitude, one business executive, well informed, and believing that some form of social security in the form of unemployment insurance is coming has invited 100 men to a meeting next week to discuss the various forms of social insurance. The workers, themselves, are apparently not interested in social insurance. Relief clients likewise are not concerned with it, have given it no thought. What they want is the creation of more jobs in industry instead of dividing up the available jobs, or supplementing them with relief projects. Neither business nor the government can predict just when that day will come to Troy.
ERNESTINE BALL
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